From Ritual to Romance by Jessie L. Weston

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This Jewish custom appears to have been adopted by the primitiveChurch, and early Christians, on their side, celebrated a SacramentalFish-meal. The Catacombs supply us with numerous illustrations, fullydescribed by the two writers referred to. The elements of this mysticmeal were Fish, Bread, and Wine, the last being represented in theMessianic tradition: "At the end of the meal God will give to the mostworthy, i.e., to King David, the Cup of Blessing--one of fabulousdimensions."[38]

Fish play an important part in Mystery Cults, as being the 'holy'food. Upon a tablet dedicated to the Phrygian Mater Magna we findFish and Cup; and Dölger, speaking of a votive tablet discovered inthe Balkans, says, "Hier ist der Fisch immer und immer wieder allzudeutlich als die heilige Speise eines Mysterien-Kultes hervorgehoben."[39]

Now I would submit that here, and not in Celtic Folk-lore, is to befound the source of Borron's Fish-meal. Let us consider thecircumstances. Joseph and his followers, in the course of theirwanderings, find themselves in danger of famine. The position issomewhat curious, as apparently the leaders have no idea of thecondition of their followers till the latter appeal to Brons.[40]

Brons informs Joseph, who prays for aid and counsel from the Grail.A Voice from Heaven bids him send his brother-in-law, Brons, to catcha fish. Meanwhile he, Joseph, is to prepare a table, set the Grail,covered with a cloth, in the centre opposite his own seat, and thefish which Brons shall catch, on the other side. He does this, andthe seats are filled--"Si s'i asieent une grant partie et plus i ot decels qui n'i sistrent mie, que de cels qui sistrent." Those whoare seated at the table are conscious of a great "douceur," and"l'accomplissement de lor cuers," the rest feel nothing.

Now compare this with the Irish story of the Salmon of Wisdom.[41]

Finn Mac Cumhail enters the service of his namesake, Finn Eger, whofor seven years had remained by the Boyne watching the Salmon of LynnFeic, which it had been foretold Finn should catch. The younger lad,who conceals his name, catches the fish. He is set to watch it whileit roasts but is warned not to eat it. Touching it with his thumb heis burned, and puts his thumb in his mouth to cool it. Immediately hebecomes possessed of all knowledge, and thereafter has only to chewhis thumb to obtain wisdom. Mr Nutt remarks: "The incident inBorron's poem has been recast in the mould of mediaeval ChristianSymbolism, but I think the older myth can still be clearly discerned,and is wholly responsible for the incident as found in the Conte duGraal."

But when these words were written we were in ignorance of theSacramental Fish-meal, common alike to Jewish, Christian, and MysteryCults, a meal which offers a far closer parallel to Borron's romancethan does the Finn story, in which, beyond the catching of a fish,there is absolutely no point of contact with our romance, neitherJoseph nor Brons derives wisdom from the eating thereof; it is notthey who detect the sinners, the severance between the good and theevil is brought about automatically. The Finn story has no commonmeal, and no idea of spiritual blessings such as are connectedtherewith.

In the case of the Messianic Fish-meal, on the other hand, theparallel is striking; in both cases it is a communal meal, in bothcases the privilege of sharing it is the reward of the faithful,in both cases it is a foretaste of the bliss of Paradise.

Furthermore, as remarked above, the practice was at one time of verywidespread prevalence.

Now whence did Borron derive his knowledge, from Jewish, Christianor Mystery sources?

This is a question not very easy to decide. In view of the pronouncedChristian tone of Borron's romance I should feel inclined to excludethe first, also the Jewish Fish-meal seems to have been of a moreopen, general and less symbolic character than the Christian; it wasfrankly an anticipation of a promised future bliss, obtainable byall.

Orthodox Christianity, on the other hand, knows nothing of the SacredFish-meal, so far as I am aware it forms no part of any Apocalypticexpectation, and where this special symbolism does occur it is oftenunder conditions which place its interpretation outside the recognizedcategory of Christian belief.

A noted instance in point is the famous epitaph of Bishop Aberkios,over the correct interpretation of which scholars have spent much timeand ingenuity.[42] In this curious text Aberkios, after mentioninghis journeys, says:

"Paul I had as my guide, Faith however always went ahead and set before me as food a Fish from a Fountain, a huge one, a clean one, Which a Holy Virgin has caught. This she gave to the friends ever to eat as food, Having good Wine, and offering it watered together with Bread. Aberkios had this engraved when 72 years of age in truth. Whoever can understand this let him pray for Aberkios."

Eisler (I am here quoting from the Quest article) remarks, "As thelast line of our quotation gives us quite plainly to understand, anumber of words which we have italicized are obviously used in anunusual, metaphorical, sense, that is to say as terms of the ChristianMystery language." While Harnack, admitting that the Christiancharacter of the text is indisputable, adds significantly: "aber dasChristentum der Grosskirche ist es nicht."

Thus it is possible that, to the various points of doubtful orthodoxywhich scholars have noted as characteristic of the Grail romances,Borron's Fish-meal should also be added.

Should it be objected that the dependence of a medieval romance upon aJewish tradition of such antiquity is scarcely probable, I would drawattention to the Voyage of Saint Brandan, where the monks, duringtheir prolonged wanderings, annually 'kept their Resurrection,' i.e.,celebrate their Easter Mass, on the back of a great Fish.[43] Ontheir first meeting with this monster Saint Brandan tells them it isthe greatest of all fishes, and is named Jastoni, a name which bearsa curious resemblance to the Jhasa of the Indian tradition citedabove.[44] In this last instance the connection of the Fish withlife, renewed and sustained, is undeniable.

The original source of such a symbol is most probably to be found inthe belief, referred to in a previous chapter,[45] that all life comesfrom the water, but that a more sensual and less abstract idea wasalso operative appears from the close connection of the Fish with thegoddess Astarte or Atargatis, a connection here shared by the Dove.Cumont, in his Les Religions Orientales dans le Paganisme Romain,says: "Two animals were held in general reverence, namely, Dove andFish. Countless flocks of Doves greeted the traveller when he steppedon shore at Askalon, and in the outer courts of all the temples ofAstarte one might see the flutter of their white wings. The Fish werepreserved in ponds near to the Temple, and superstitious dread forbadetheir capture, for the goddess punished such sacrilege, smiting theoffender with ulcers and tumours."[46]

But at certain mystic banquets priests and initiates partook of thisotherwise forbidden food, in the belief that they thus partook of theflesh of the goddess. Eisler and other scholars are of the opinionthat it was the familiarity with this ritual gained by the Jews duringthe Captivity that led to the adoption of the Friday Fish-meal,already referred to, Friday being the day dedicated to the goddessand, later, to her equivalent, Venus. From the Jews the custom spreadto the Christian Church, where it still flourishes, its true origin,it is needless to say, being wholly unsuspected.[47]

Dove and Fish also appear together in ancient iconography. In ComteGoblet d'Alviella's work The Migration of Symbols there is anillustration of a coin of Cyzicus, on which is represented anOmphalus, flanked by two Doves, with a Fish beneath;[48] and a wholesection is devoted to the discussion of the representations of twoDoves on either side of a Temple entrance, or of an Omphalus. In theauthor's opinion the origin of the symbol may be found in the sacreddove-cotes of Phoenicia, referred to by Cumont.

Scheftelowitz instances the combination of Fish-meal and Dove, foundon a Jewish tomb of the first century at Syracuse, and remarks thatthe two are frequently found in combination on Christiantombstones.[49]

Students of the Grail romances will not need to be reminded that theDove makes its appearance in certain of our texts. In the Parzival itplays a somewhat important rôle; every Good Friday a Dove brings fromHeaven a Host, which it lays upon the Grail; and the Dove is thebadge of the Grail Knights.[50] In the prose Lancelot the coming ofthe Grail procession is heralded by the entrance through the window ofa Dove, bearing a censer in its beak.[51] Is it not possible that itwas the already existing connection in Nature ritual of these two,Dove and Fish, which led to the introduction of the former into ourromances, where its rôle is never really adequately motivated? It isfurther to be noted that besides Dove and Fish the Syriansreverenced Stones, more especially meteoric Stones, which theyheld to be endowed with life potency, another point of contact withour romances.[52]

That the Fish was considered a potent factor in ensuring fruitfulnessis proved by certain prehistoric tablets described by Scheftelowitz,where Fish, Horse, and Swastika, or in another instance Fish andReindeer, are found in a combination which unmistakeably denotesthat the object of the votive tablet was to ensure the fruitfulnessof flocks and herds.[53]

With this intention its influence was also invoked in marriageceremonies. The same writer points out that the Jews in Polandwere accustomed to hold a Fish feast immediately on the conclusionof the marriage ceremony and that a similar practice can be provefor the ancient Greeks.[54] At the present day the Jews of Tunisexhibit a Fish's tail on a cushion at their weddings.[55] Insome parts of India the newly-wedded pair waded knee-deep into thewater, and caught fish in a new garment. During the ceremony aBrahmin student, from the shore, asked solemnly, "What seest thou?"to which the answer was returned, "Sons and Cattle."[56] In allthese cases there can be no doubt that it was the prolific natureof the Fish, a feature which it shares in common with the Dove,which inspired practice and intention.

Surely the effect of this cumulative body of evidence is to justify usin the belief that Fish and Fisher, being, as they undoubtedly are,Life symbols of immemorial antiquity, are, by virtue of their origin,entirely in their place in a sequence of incidents which there issolid ground for believing derive ultimately from a Cult of thisnature. That Borron's Fish-meal, that the title of Fisher King, arenot accidents of literary invention but genuine and integral parts ofthe common body of tradition which has furnished the incidents andmise-en-scène of the Grail drama. Can it be denied that, while fromthe standpoint of a Christian interpretation the character of theFisher King is simply incomprehensible, from the standpoint of Folk-taleinadequately explained, from that of a Ritual survival it assumes aprofound meaning and significance? He is not merely a deeply symbolicfigure, but the essential centre of the whole cult, a beingsemi-divine, semi-human, standing between his people and land, andthe unseen forces which control their destiny. If the Grail story bebased upon a Life ritual the character of the Fisher King is of thevery essence of the tale, and his title, so far from beingmeaningless, expresses, for those who are at pains to seek, theintention and object of the perplexing whole. The Fisher King is,as I suggested above, the very heart and centre of the whole mystery,and I contend that with an adequate interpretation of this enigmaticcharacter the soundness of the theory providing such an interpretationmay be held to be definitely proved.

CHAPTER X

The Secret of the Grail (1)

The Mysteries

Students of the Grail literature cannot fail to have been impressed bya certain atmosphere of awe and mystery which surrounds that enigmaticVessel. There is a secret connected with it, the revelation of whichwill entail dire misfortune on the betrayer. If spoken of at all itmust be with scrupulous accuracy. It is so secret a thing that nowoman, be she wife or maid, may venture to speak of it. A priest, ora man of holy life might indeed tell the marvel of the Grail, but nonecan hearken to the recital without shuddering, trembling, and changingcolour for very fear.

The above refers to Gawain's adventure at the Black Chapel, en routefor the Grail Castle.

The following is the answer given to Perceval by the maiden of theWhite Mule, after he has been overtaken by a storm in the forest.She tells him the mysterious light he beheld proceeded from the Grail,but on his enquiry as to what the Grail may be, refuses to give himany information.

From this evidence there is no doubt that to the romance writers theGrail was something secret, mysterious and awful, the exact knowledgeof which was reserved to a select few, and which was only to be spokenof with bated breath, and a careful regard to strict accuracy.

But how does this agree with the evidence set forth in our precedingchapters? There we have been led rather to emphasize the closeparallels existing between the characters and incidents of the Grailstory, and a certain well-marked group of popular beliefs andobservances, now very generally recognized as fragments of a oncewidespread Nature Cult. These beliefs and observances, while datingfrom remotest antiquity, have, in their modern survivals, ofrecent years, attracted the attention of scholars by their persistentand pervasive character, and their enduring vitality.

Yet, so far as we have hitherto dealt with them, these practices were,and are, popular in character, openly performed, and devoid of thespecial element of mystery which is so characteristic a feature of theGrail.

Nor, in these public Folk-ceremonies, these Spring festivals, Dances,and Plays, is there anything which, on the face of it, appears tobring them into touch with the central mystery of the ChristianFaith. Yet the men who wrote these romances saw no incongruity inidentifying the mysterious Food-providing Vessel of theBleheris-Gawain version with the Chalice of the Eucharist, and inascribing the power of bestowing Spiritual Life to that which certainmodern scholars have identified as a Wunsch-Ding, a Folk-tale Vesselof Plenty.

If there be a mystery of the Grail surely the mystery lies here, inthe possibility of identifying two objects which, apparently, lie atthe very opposite poles of intellectual conception. What brought themtogether? Where shall we seek a connecting link? By what road didthe romancers reach so strangely unexpected a goal?

It is, of course, very generally recognized that in the case of mostof the pre-Christian religions, upon the nature and character of whoserites we possess reliable information, such rites possessed a two-foldcharacter--exoteric; in celebrations openly and publicly performed,in which all adherents of that particular cult could join freely,the object of such public rites being to obtain some external andmaterial benefit, whether for the individual worshipper, or forthe community as a whole--esoteric; rites open only to a favoured few,the initiates, the object of which appears, as a rule, to have beenindividual rather than social, and non-material. In some cases,certainly, the object aimed at was the attainment of a conscious,ecstatic, union with the god, and the definite assurance of a futurelife. In other words there was the public worship, and there werethe Mysteries.

Of late years there has been a growing tendency among scholars to seekin the Mysteries the clue which shall enable us to read aright thebaffling riddle of the Grail, and there can be little doubt that, inso doing, we are on the right path. At the same time I am convincedthat to seek that clue in those Mysteries which are at once the mostfamous, and the most familiar to the classical scholar, i.e., theEleusinian, is a fatal mistake. There are, as we shall see, certainessential, and radical, differences between the Greek and theChristian religious conceptions which, affecting as they do the rootconceptions of the two groups, render it quite impossible that any formof the Eleusinian Mystery cult could have given such results as wefind in the Grail legend.[4]

This is perfectly true, but it was not only the influence of milieu,not only the fact that the 'hellenized' faiths were, as Cumont pointsout, more advanced, richer in ideas and sentiments, more pregnant,more poignant, than the more strictly 'classic' faiths, but theypossessed, in common with Christianity, certain distinctive featureslacking in these latter.

If we were asked to define the special characteristic of the centralChristian rite, should we not state it as being a Sacred meal ofCommunion in which the worshipper, not merely symbolically, butactually, partakes of, and becomes one with, his God, receivingthereby the assurance of eternal life? (The Body of Our Lord JesusChrist preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life.)

But it is precisely this conception which is lacking in the GreekMysteries, and that inevitably, as Rohde points out: "The EleusinianMysteries in common with all Greek religion, differentiated clearlybetween gods and men, eins ist der Menschen, ein andres derGötter-Geschlecht--en andron, en theon genos." The attainment ofunion with the god, by way of ecstasy, as in other Mystery cults, isforeign to the Eleusinian idea. As Cumont puts it "The Greco-Romandeities rejoice in the perpetual calm and youth of Olympus, theEastern deities die to live again."[6] In other words Greek religionlacks the Sacramental idea.[*** Note: Weston used Greek alphabetic characters above ***]

Thus even if we set aside the absence of a parallel between the ritualof the Greek Mysteries and the mise-en-scène of the Grail stories,Eleusis would be unable to offer us those essential elements whichwould have rendered possible a translation of the incidents of thosestories into terms of high Christian symbolism. Yet we cannot refrainfrom the conclusion that there was something in the legend that notmerely rendered possible, but actually invited, such a translation.

If we thus dismiss, as fruitless for our investigation, the mostfamous representative of the Hellenic Mysteries proper, how does thequestion stand with regard to those faiths to which Cumont is referring,the hellenized cults of Asia Minor?

Here the evidence, not merely of the existence of Mysteries, butof their widespread popularity, and permeating influence, isoverwhelming; the difficulty is not so much to prove our case, asto select and co-ordinate the evidence germane to our enquiry.

Regarding the question as a whole it is undoubtedly true that, asAnrich remarks, "the extent of the literature devoted to the Mysteriesstands in no relation whatever (gar keinem Verhältniss) to theimportance in reality attached to them."[7] Later in the sameconnection, after quoting Clement of Alexandria's dictum "GeheimeDinge wie die Gottheit, werden der Rede anvertraut, nicht derSchrift," he adds, "Schriftliche Fixierung ist schon beinaheEntweihung."[8] A just remark which it would be well if certaincritics who make a virtue of refusing to accept as evidence anythingshort of a direct and positive literary statement would bear in mind.There are certain lines of research in which, as Bishop Butlerlong since emphasized, probability must be our guide.

Fortunately, however, so far as our present research is concerned,we have more than probability to rely upon; not only did these NatureCults with which we are dealing express themselves in Mystery terms,but as regards these special Mysteries we possess clear and definiteinformation, and we know, moreover, that in the Western world theywere, of all the Mystery faiths, the most widely spread, and the mostinfluential.

As Sir J. G. Frazer has before now pointed out, there are paralleland over-lapping forms of this cult, the name of the god, and certaindetails of the ritual, may differ in different countries, but whetherhe hails from Babylon, Phrygia, or Phoenicia, whether he be calledTammuz, Attis, or Adonis, the main lines of the story are fixed, andinvariable. Always he is young and beautiful, always the beloved of agreat goddess; always he is the victim of a tragic and untimely death,a death which entails bitter loss and misfortune upon a mourningworld, and which, for the salvation of that world, is followed by aresurrection. Death and Resurrection, mourning and rejoicing, presentthemselves in sharp antithesis in each and all of the forms.

We know the god best as Adonis, for it was under that name that,though not originally Greek, he became known to the Greek world, wasadopted by them with ardour, carried by them to Alexandria, where hisfeast assumed the character of a State solemnity; under that name hisstory has been enshrined in Art, and as Adonis he is loved andlamented to this day. The Adonis ritual may be held to be the classicform of the cult.

But in Rome, the centre of Western civilization, it was otherwise:there it was the Phrygian god who was in possession; the dominatingposition held by the cult of Attis and the Magna Mater, and theprofound influence exercised by that cult over better known, butsubsequently introduced, forms of worship, have not, so far, beensufficiently realized.

The first of the Oriental cults to gain a footing in the Imperialcity, the worship of the Magna Mater of Pessinonte was, for a time,rigidly confined within the limits of her sanctuary. The orgiasticritual of the priests of Kybele made at first little appeal to the moredisciplined temperament of the Roman population. By degrees, however,it won its way, and by the reign of Claudius had become so popularthat the emperor instituted public feasts in honour of Kybele andAttis, feasts which were celebrated at the Spring solstice, March15th-27th.[9]

Certain of the Gnostic sects, both pre- and post-Christian, appearto have been enthusiastic participants in the Attis mysteries;[11]Hepding, in his Attis study, goes so far as to refer to BishopAberkios, to whose enigmatic epitaph our attention was directed inthe last chapter, as "der Attis-Preister."[12]

Another element aided in the diffusion of the ritual. Of all theOriental cults which journeyed Westward under the aegis of Rome nonewas so deeply rooted or so widely spread as the originally Persiancult of Mithra--the popular religion of the Roman legionary. Butbetween the cults of Mithra and of Attis there was a close andintimate alliance. In parts of Asia Minor the Persian god had earlytaken over features of the Phrygian deity. "Aussitôt que nous pouvonsconstater la présence du culte Persique en Italie nous le trouvonsétroitement uni à celui de la Grande Mére de Pessinonte."[13]The union between Mithra and the goddess Anâhita was held to be theequivalent of that subsisting between the two great Phrygian deitiesAttis-Kybele. The most ancient Mithreum known, that at Ostia, wasattached to the Metroon, the temple of Kybele. At Saalburg the ruinsof the two temples are but a few steps apart. "L'on a tout lieu decroire que le culte du dieu Iranien et celui de la déesse Phrygiennevécurent en communion intime sur toute l'étendue de l'Empire."[14]

A proof of the close union of the two cults is afforded by the mysticrite of the Taurobolium, which was practised by both, and which, inthe West, at least, seems to have passed from the temples of theMithra to those of the Magna Mater. At the same time Cumont remarksthat the actual rite seems to have been practised in Asia from a greatantiquity, before Mithraism had attributed to it a spiritualsignificance. It is thus possible that the rite had earlier formed apart of the Attis initiation, and had been temporarily disused.[15]

We shall see that the union of the Mithra-Attis cults becomes ofdistinct importance when we examine, (a) the spiritual significanceof these rituals, and their elements of affinity with Christianity,(b) their possible diffusion in the British Isles.

But now what do we know of the actual details of the Attis mysteries?The first and most important point was a Mystic Meal, at which thefood partaken of was served in the sacred vessels, the tympanum, andthe cymbals. The formula of an Attis initiate was "I have eaten fromthe tympanum, I have drunk from the cymbals." As I have remarkedabove, the food thus partaken of was a Food of Life--"DieAttis-Diener in der Tat eine magische Speise des Lebens aus ihrenKult-Geräten zu essen meinten."[16]

Dieterich in his interesting study entitled Eine Mithrasliturgierefers to this meal as the centre of the whole religious action.

Further, in some mysterious manner, the fate of the initiate wasconnected with, and dependent upon, the death and resurrection of thegod. The Christian writer Firmicius Maternus, at one time himself aninitiate, has left an account of the ceremony, without, however,specifying whether the deity in question was Attis or Adonis--asDieterich remarks "Was er erzählt kann sich auf Attis-gemeinden, undauf Adonis-gemeinden beziehen."

'Have courage, O initiates of the saviour-god, For there will be salvation for us from our toils--'

on which Dieterich remarks: "Das Heil der Mysten hängt an der Rettungdes Gottes."[17][*** Note: The above has an English translation of Weston's Greek ***]

Hepding holds that in some cases there was an actual burial, andawakening with the god to a new life.[18] In any case it is clearthat the successful issue of the test of initiation was dependentupon the resurrection and revival of the god.

Now is it not clear that we have here a close parallel with theGrail romances? In each case we have a common, and mystic, meal,in which the food partaken of stands in close connection with the holyvessels. In the Attis feast the initiates actually ate and drank fromthese vessels; in the romances the Grail community never actually eatfrom the Grail itself, but the food is, in some mysterious andunexplained manner, supplied by it. In both cases it is aLebens-Speise, a Food of Life. This point is especially insisted uponin the Parzival, where the Grail community never become any older thanthey were on the day they first beheld the Talisman.[19] In the Attisinitiation the proof that the candidate has successfully passed thetest is afforded by the revival of the god--in the Grail romances theproof lies in the healing of the Fisher King.

Thus, while deferring for a moment any insistence on the obviouspoints of parallelism with the Sacrament of the Eucharist, and thepossibilities of Spiritual teaching inherent in the ceremonies,necessary links in our chain of argument, we are, I think, entitled tohold that, even when we pass beyond the outward mise-en-scène of thestory--the march of incident, the character of the King, his title,his disability, and relation to his land and folk--to the inner anddeeper significance of the tale, the Nature Cults still remainreliable guides; it is their inner, their esoteric, ritual whichwill enable us to bridge the gulf between what appears at first sightthe wholly irreconcilable elements of Folk-tale and high Spiritualmystery.

CHAPTER XI

The Secret of the Grail (2)

The Naassene Document

We have now seen that the Ritual which, as we have postulated, lies,in a fragmentary and distorted condition, at the root of our existingGrail romances, possessed elements capable of assimilation with areligious system which the great bulk of its modern adherents wouldunhesitatingly declare to be its very antithesis. That Christianitymight have borrowed from previously existing cults certain outwardsigns and symbols, might have accommodated itself to already existingFasts and Feasts, may be, perforce has had to be, more or lessgrudgingly admitted; that such a rapprochement should have gonefurther, that it should even have been inherent in the very nature ofthe Faith, that, to some of the deepest thinkers of old, Christianityshould have been held for no new thing but a fulfilment of thepromise enshrined in the Mysteries from the beginning of the world,will to many be a strange and startling thought. Yet so it was, and Ifirmly believe that it is only in the recognition of this one-timeclaim of essential kinship between Christianity and the PaganMysteries that we shall find the key to the Secret of the Grail.

And here at the outset I would ask those readers who are inclined toturn with feelings of contemptuous impatience from what they deem anunprofitable discussion of idle speculations which have little ornothing to do with a problem they hold to be one of purely literaryinterest, to be solved by literary comparison and criticism, and by noother method, to withhold their verdict till they have carefullyexamined the evidence I am about to bring forward, evidence which hasnever so far been examined in this connection, but which if I am notgreatly mistaken provides us with clear and unmistakable proof of theactual existence of a ritual in all points analogous to that indicatedby the Grail romances.

In the previous chapter we have seen that there is evidence, andabundant evidence, not merely of the existence of Mysteries connectedwith the worship of Adonis-Attis, but of the high importance assignedto such Mysteries; at the time of the birth of Christianity they wereundoubtedly the most popular and the most influential of the foreigncults adopted by Imperial Rome. In support of this statement I quotedcertain passages from Cumont's Religions Orientales, in which hetouches on the subject: here are two other quotations which may wellserve as introduction to the evidence we are about to examine."Researches on the doctrines and practices common to Christianity andthe Oriental Mysteries almost invariably go back, beyond the limits ofthe Roman Empire, to the Hellenized East. It is there we must seekthe key of enigmas still unsolved--The essential fact to remember isthat the Eastern religions had diffused, first anterior to, thenparallel with, Christianity, doctrines which acquired with this lattera universal authority in the decline of the ancient world. Thepreaching of Asiatic priests prepared in their own despite the triumphof the Church."[1]

But the triumph of the new Faith once assured the organizing,dominating, influence of Imperial Rome speedily came into play.Christianity, originally an Eastern, became a Western, religion,the 'Mystery' elements were frowned upon, kinship with pre-Christianfaiths ignored, or denied; where the resemblances between the cultsproved too striking for either of these methods such resemblances wereboldly attributed to the invention of the Father of Lies himself, acunning snare whereby to deceive unwary souls. Christianity wascarefully trimmed, shaped, and forced into an Orthodox mould, andanything that refused to adapt itself to this drastic process becameby that very refusal anathema to the righteous.

Small wonder that, under such conditions, the early ages of the Churchwere marked by a fruitful crop of Heresies, and heresy-hunting becamean intellectual pastime in high favour among the strictly orthodox.Among the writers of this period whose works have been preservedHippolytus, Bishop of Portus in the early years of the third century,was one of the most industrious. He compiled a voluminous treatise,entitled Philosophumena, or The Refutation of all Heresies, of whichonly one MS. and that of the fourteenth century, has descended to us.The work was already partially known by quotations, the first Book hadbeen attributed to Origen, and published in the editio princeps of hisworks. The text originally consisted of ten Books, but of these thefirst three, and part of the fourth, are missing from the MS. TheOrigen text supplies part of the lacuna, but two entire Books, andpart of a third are missing.

Now these special Books, we learn from the Introduction, dealt withthe doctrines and Mysteries of the Egyptians and Chaldaeans, whosemost sacred secrets Hippolytus boasts that he has divulged.Curiously enough, not only are these Books lacking but in the Epitomeat the beginning of Book X. the summary of their contents is alsomissing, a significant detail, which, as has been suggested bycritics, looks like a deliberate attempt on the part of some copyistto suppress the information contained in the Books in question.Incidentally this would seem to suggest that the worthy bishop was notmaking an empty boast when he claimed to be a revealer of secrets.

But what is of special interest to us is the treatment meted out tothe Christian Mystics, whom Hippolytus stigmatizes as heretics, andwhose teaching he deliberately asserts to be simply that of the PaganMysteries. He had come into possession of a secret document belongingto one of these sects, whom he calls the Naassenes; this document hegives in full, and it certainly throws a most extraordinary light uponthe relation which this early Christian sect held to exist between theNew, and the Old, Faith. Mr G. R. S. Mead, in his translation of theHermetic writings entitled Thrice-Greatest Hermes, has given a carefultranslation and detailed analysis of this most important text, and itis from his work that I shall quote.

So far as the structure of the document is concerned Mr Meaddistinguishes three stages.

(a) An original Pagan source, possibly dating from the last half ofthe first century B.C., but containing material of earlier date.

(b) The working over of this source by a Jewish Mystic whom the criticholds to have been a contemporary of Philo.

(c) A subsequent working over, with additions, by a Christian Gnostic(Naassene), in the middle of the second century A. D. Finally the textwas edited by Hippolytus, in the Refutation, about 222 A. D. Thus theground covered is roughly from 50 B. C. to 220 A. D.[2]

In the translation given by Mr Mead these successive layers aredistinguished by initial letters and difference of type, but thesedistinctions are not of importance for us; what we desire to know iswhat was really held and taught by these mystics of the Early Church.Mr Mead, in his introductory remarks, summarizes the evidence asfollows: "The claim of these Gnostics was practically thatChristianity, or rather the Good News of The Christ, was preciselythe consummation of the inner doctrine of the Mystery-institutionsof all the nations: the end of them all was the revelation of theMystery of Man."[3] In other words the teaching of these Naasseneswas practically a synthesis of all the Mystery-religions, and althoughHippolytus regards them as nothing more than devotees of the cult ofthe Magna Mater, we shall see that, while their doctrine and teachingwere undoubtedly based mainly upon the doctrine and practices of thePhrygian Mysteries, they practically identified the deity thereinworshipped, i.e., Attis, with the presiding deity of all the otherMysteries.

Mr Mead draws attention to the fact that Hippolytus places theseNaassenes in the fore-front of his Refutation; they are the firstgroup of Heretics with whom he deals, and we may therefore concludethat he considered them, if not the most important, at least theoldest, of such sectaries.[4]

With these prefatory remarks it will be well to let the documentspeak for itself. It is of considerable length, and, as we have seen,of intricate construction. I shall therefore quote only thosesections which bear directly upon the subject of our investigation;any reader desirous of fuller information can refer to Mr Mead's work,or to the original text published by Reitzenstein.[5]

At the outset it will be well to understand that the central doctrineof all these Mysteries is what Reitzenstein sums up as "the doctrineof the Man, the Heavenly Man, the Son of God, who descends and becomesa slave of the Fate Sphere: the Man who, though originally endowedwith all power, descends into weakness and bondage, and has to win hisown freedom, and regain his original state. This doctrine is notEgyptian, but seems to have been in its origin part and parcel ofthe Chaldean Mystery-tradition and was widely spread in Hellenisticcircles."[6]

Thus, in the introductory remarks prefixed by Hippolytus to thedocument he is quoting he asserts that the Naassenes honour as theLogos of all universals Man, and Son of Man--"and they divide himinto three, for they say he has a mental, psychic, and choïc aspect;and they think that the Gnosis of this Man is the beginning of thepossibility of knowing God, saying, 'The beginning of Perfection isthe Gnosis of Man, but the Gnosis of God is perfected Perfection.'All these, mental, psychic, and earthy, descended together into oneMan, Jesus, the Son of Mary."[7]

Thus the Myth of Man, the Mystery of Generation, is the subject matterof the document in question, and this myth is set forth with referenceto all the Mysteries, beginning with the Assyrian.

Paragraph 5 runs: "Now the Assyrians call this Mystery Adonis, andwhenever it is called Adonis it is Aphrodite who is in love with anddesires Soul so-called, and Aphrodite is Genesis according tothem."[8]

But in the next section the writer jumps from the Assyrian to thePhrygian Mysteries, saying, "But if the Mother of the Gods emasculatesAttis, she too regarding him as the object of her love, it is theBlessed Nature above of the super-Cosmic, and Aeonian spaces whichcalls back the masculine power of Soul to herself."[9]

In a note to this Mr Mead quotes from The Life of Isidorus: "I fellasleep and in a vision Attis seemed to appear to me, and on behalfof the Mother of gods to initiate me into the feast called Hilario,a mystery which discloses the way of our salvation from Hades."Throughout the document reference is continually made to the Phrygiansand their doctrine of Man. The Eleusinian Mysteries are then treatedof as subsequent to the Phrygian, "after the Phrygians, theAthenians," but the teaching is represented as being essentiallyidentical.

We have then a passage of great interest for our investigation, inwhich the Mysteries are sharply divided into two classes, and theirseparate content clearly defined. There are--"the little Mysteries,those of the Fleshly Generation, and after men have been initiatedinto them they should cease for a while and become initiated in theGreat, Heavenly, Mysteries--for this is the Gate of Heaven, andthis is the House of God, where the Good God dwells alone, intowhich House no impure man shall come."[10] Hippolytus remarks that"these Naassenes say that the performers in theatres, they too,neither say nor do anything without design--for example, when thepeople assemble in the theatre, and a man comes on the stage cladin a robe different from all others, with lute in hand on which heplays, and thus chants the Great Mysteries, not knowing what he says:

'Whether blest Child of Kronos, or of Zeus, or of Great Rhea, Hail Attis, thou mournful song of Rhea! Assyrians call thee thrice-longed-for Adonis; All Egypt calls thee Osiris; The Wisdom of Hellas names thee Men's Heavenly Horn; The Samothracians call thee august Adama; The Haemonians, Korybas; The Phrygians name thee Papa sometimes; At times again Dead, or God, or Unfruitful, or Aipolos; Or Green Reaped Wheat-ear; Or the Fruitful that Amygdalas brought forth, Man, Piper--Attis!'

This is the Attis of many forms, of whom they sing as follows:

'Of Attis will I sing, of Rhea's Beloved, Not with the booming of bells, Nor with the deep-toned pipe of Idaean Kuretes; But I will blend my song with Phoebus' music of the lyre; Evoi, Evan,--for thou art Pan, thou Bacchus art, and Shepherd of bright stars!'"[11]

On this Hippolytus comments: "For these and suchlike reasons theseNaassenes frequent what are called the Mysteries of the Great Mother,believing that they obtain the clearest view of the universal Mysteryfrom the things done in them."

And after all this evidence of elaborate syncretism, this practicalidentification of all the Mystery-gods with the Vegetation deityAdonis-Attis, we are confronted in the concluding paragraph, afterstating that "the True Gate is Jesus the Blessed," with thisastounding claim, from the pen of the latest redactor, "And of allmen we alone are Christians, accomplishing the Mystery at the ThirdGate."[12]

Now what conclusions are to be drawn from this document which, inits entirety, Mr Mead regards as "the most important source we havefor the higher side (regeneration) of the Hellenistic Mysteries"?

First of all, does it not provide a complete and overwhelmingjustification of those scholars who have insisted upon the importanceof these Vegetation cults--a justification of which, from the verynature of their studies, they could not have been aware?

Sir James Frazer, and those who followed him, have dealt with thepublic side of the cult, with its importance as a recognized vehiclefor obtaining material advantages; it was the social, rather thanthe individual, aspect which appealed to them. Now we find that inthe immediate pre- and post-Christian era these cults were considerednot only most potent factors for assuring the material prosperity ofland and folk, but were also held to be the most appropriate vehiclefor imparting the highest religious teaching. The Vegetation deities,Adonis-Attis, and more especially the Phrygian god, were the chosenguides to the knowledge of, and union with, the supreme SpiritualSource of Life, of which they were the communicating medium.

We must remember that though the document before us is, in its actualform, the expression of faith of a discredited 'Christian-Gnostic'sect, the essential groundwork upon which it is elaborated belongsto a period anterior to Christianity, and that the Ode in honour ofAttis quoted above not only forms part of the original source, but is,in the opinion of competent critics, earlier than the source itself.

I would also recall to the memory of the reader the passage previouslyquoted from Cumont, in which he refers to the use made by theNeo-Platonist philosophers of the Attis legend, as the mould intowhich they poured their special theories of the universe, and ofgeneration.[13] Can the importance of a cult capable of suchfar-reaching developments be easily exaggerated? Secondly, and ofmore immediate importance for our investigation, is it not evidentthat we have here all the elements necessary for a mysticaldevelopment of the Grail tradition? The Exoteric side of the cultgives us the Human, the Folk-lore, elements--the Suffering King; theWaste Land; the effect upon the Folk; the task that lies before thehero; the group of Grail symbols. The Esoteric side provides us withthe Mystic Meal, the Food of Life, connected in some mysterious waywith a Vessel which is the centre of the cult; the combination of thatvessel with a Weapon, a combination bearing a well-known 'generative'significance; a double initiation into the source of the lower andhigher spheres of Life; the ultimate proof of the successful issue ofthe final test in the restoration of the King. I would ask anyhonest-minded critic whether any of the numerous theories previouslyadvanced has shown itself capable of furnishing so comprehensive asolution of the ensemble problem?

At the same time it should be pointed out that the acceptance of thistheory of the origin of the story in no way excludes the possibilityof the introduction of other elements during the period of romanticevolution. As I have previously insisted,[14] not all of those whohandled the theme knew the real character of the material with whichthey were dealing, while even among those who did know there weresome who allowed themselves considerable latitude in their methods ofcomposition; who did not scruple to introduce elements foreign to theoriginal Stoff, but which would make an appeal to the public of theday. Thus while Bleheris who, I believe, really held a tradition ofthe original cult, contented himself with a practically simple recitalof the initiations, later redactors, under the influence of theCrusades, and the Longinus legend--possibly also actuated by a desireto substitute a more edifying explanation than that originallyoffered--added a directly Christian interpretation of the Lance. Asit is concerning the Lance alone that Gawain asks, the firstmodification must have been at this point; the bringing into line ofthe twin symbol, the Vase, would come later.

The fellowship, it may even be, the rivalry, between the two greatBenedictine houses of Fescamp and Glastonbury, led to the redaction,in the interests of the latter, of a Saint-Sang legend, parallel tothat which was the genuine possession of the French house.[15] For wemust emphasize the fact that the original Joseph-Glastonbury story isa Saint-Sang, and not a Grail legend. A phial containing the Blood ofOur Lord was said to have been buried in the tomb of Joseph--surely acurious fate for so precious a relic--and the Abbey never laid claimto the possession of the Vessel of the Last Supper.[16] Had it doneso it would certainly have become a noted centre of pilgrimage--as DrBrugger acutely remarks such relics are besucht, not gesucht.

But there is reason to believe that the kindred Abbey of Fescamp haddeveloped its genuine Saint-Sang legend into a Grail romance, andthere is critical evidence to lead us to suppose that the text weknow as Perlesvaus was, in its original form, now it is to be fearedpractically impossible to reconstruct, connected with that Abbey.As we have it, this alone, of all the Grail romances, connects the heroalike with Nicodemus, and with Joseph of Arimathea, the respectiveprotagonists of the Saint-Sang legends; while its assertion that theoriginal Latin text was found in a holy house situated in marshes, theburial place of Arthur and Guenevere, unmistakably points toGlastonbury.

In any case, when Robert de Borron proposed to himself the task ofcomposing a trilogy on the subject the Joseph legend was already ina developed form, and a fresh element, the combination of the Graillegend with the story of a highly popular Folk-tale hero, known inthis connection as Perceval (though he has had many names), wasestablished.

Borron was certainly aware of the real character of his material;he knew the Grail cult as Christianized Mystery, and, while followingthe romance development, handled the theme on distinctively religiouslines, preserving the Mystery element in its three-fold development,and equating the Vessel of the Mystic Feast with the ChristianEucharist. From what we now know of the material it seems certainthat the equation was already established, and that Borron was simplystating in terms of romance what was already known to him in terms ofMystery. In face of the evidence above set forth there can no longerbe any doubt that the Mystic Feast of the Nature cults really had, andthat at a very early date, been brought into touch with the Sacramentof the Eucharist.

But to Chrétien de Troyes the story was romance, pure and simple.There was still a certain element of awe connected with Grail, andGrail Feast, but of the real meaning and origin of the incidents hehad, I am convinced, no idea whatever. Probably many modificationswere already in his source, but the result so far as his poem isconcerned is that he duplicated the character of the Fisher King;he separated both, Father and Son, from the Wasted Land, transferringthe responsibility for the woes of Land and Folk to the Quester,who, although his failure might be responsible for their continuance,never had anything to do with their origin. He bestowed the wound ofthe Grail King, deeply significant in its original conception andconnection, upon Perceval's father, a shadowy character, entirelyapart from the Grail tradition. There is no trace of the Initiationelements in his poem, no Perilous Chapel, no welding of the Sword.We have here passed completely and entirely into the land of romance,the doors of the Temple are closed behind us. It is the story ofPerceval li Gallois, not the Ritual of the Grail, which fills thestage, and with the story of Perceval there comes upon the scenea crowd of Folk-tale themes, absolutely foreign to the Grail itself.

Thus we have not only the central theme of the lad reared inwoodland solitude, making his entrance into a world of whoseordinary relations he is absolutely and ludicrously ignorant,and the traditional illustrations of the results of that ignorance,such as the story of the Lady of the Tent and the stolen ring;but we have also the sinister figure of the Red Knight with hisWitch Mother; the three drops of blood upon the snow, and the ensuinglove trance; pure Folk-tale themes, mingled with the more chivalricelements of the rescue of a distressed maiden, and the vanquishingin single combat of doughty antagonists, Giant, or Saracen. One andall of them elements offering widespread popular parallels, andinviting the unwary critic into paths which lead him far astray fromthe goal of his quest, the Grail Castle. I dispute in no way thepossible presence of Celtic elements in this complex. The Lance maywell have borrowed at one time features from early Irish tradition,at another details obviously closely related to the Longinus legend.It is even possible that, as Burdach insists, features of the ByzantineLiturgy may have coloured the representation of the Grail procession,although, for my own part, I consider such a theory highly improbablein view of the facts that (a) Chrétien's poem otherwise shows no tracesof Oriental influence; (b) the 'Spear' in the Eastern rite is simplya small spear-shaped knife; (c) the presence of the lights isaccounted for by the author of Sone de Nansai on the ground of aNativity legend, the authenticity of which was pointed out by thelate M. Gaston Paris; (d) it is only in the later prose form that wefind any suggestion of a Grail Chapel, whereas were the source of thestory really to be found in the Mass, such a feature would certainlyhave had its place in the earliest versions. But in each and allthese cases the solution proposed has no relation to other featuresof the story; it is consequently of value in, and per se, only, andcannot be regarded as valid evidence for the source of the legend asa whole. In the process of transmutation from Ritual to Romance,the kernel, the Grail legend proper, may be said to have formed foritself a shell composed of accretions of widely differing provenance.It is the legitimate task of criticism to analyse such accretions, andto resolve them into their original elements, but they are accretions,and should be treated as such, not confounded with the original andessential material. After upwards of thirty years spent in carefulstudy of the Grail legend and romances I am firmly and entirelyconvinced that the root origin of the whole bewildering complex is tobe found in the Vegetation Ritual, treated from the esoteric point ofview as a Life-Cult, and in that alone. Christian Legend, andtraditional Folk-tale, have undoubtedly contributed to the perfectedromantic corpus, but they are in truth subsidiary and secondary features;a criticism that would treat them as original and primary can but defeatits own object; magnified out of proportion they becomestumbling-blocks upon the path, instead of sign-posts towards the goal.

CHAPTER XII

Mithra and Attis

The fact that there was, at a very early date, among a certain sect ofChristian Gnostics, a well-developed body of doctrine, based upon theessential harmony existing between the Old Faith and the New, whichclaimed by means of a two-fold Initiation to impact to the innercircle of its adherents the secret of life, physical and spiritual,being, in face of the evidence given in the previous chapter, placedbeyond any possible doubt, we must now ask, is there any evidence thatsuch teaching survived for any length of time, or could havepenetrated to the British Isles, where, in view of the priority of theBleheris-Gawain form, the Grail legend, as we know it, seems to haveoriginated? I think there is at least presumptive evidence of suchpreservation, and transmission. I have already alluded to the closeconnection existing between the Attis cult, and the worship of thepopular Persian deity, Mithra, and have given quotations from Cumontillustrating this connection; it will be worth while to study thequestion somewhat more closely, and discover, if possible, the reasonfor this intimate alliance.

On the face of it there seems to be absolutely no reason for theconnection of these cults; the two deities in no way resemble eachother; the stories connected with them have no possible analogy;the root conception is widely divergent.

With the character of the deity we know as Adonis, or Attis, we arenow thoroughly familiar. In the first instance it seems to be thehuman element in the myth which is most insisted upon. He is amortal youth beloved by a great goddess; only after his tragic deathdoes he appear to assume divine attributes, and, alike in death andresurrection, become the accepted personification of natural energies.

This summary may aptly be compared with the lament for Tammuz,quoted in Chapter 3.

But the worship of Mithra in the form in which it spread throughoutthe Roman Empire, Mithra as the god of the Imperial armies, the deitybeloved of the Roman legionary, was in no sense of this concrete andmaterial type.

Finally, Mithraism taught the resurrection of the body--Mithra willdescend upon earth, and will revive all men. All will issue fromtheir graves, resume their former appearance and recognize eachother. All will be united in one great assembly, and the good willbe separated from the evil. Then in one supreme sacrifice Mithrawill immolate the divine bull, and mixing its fat with the consecratedwine will offer to the righteous the cup of Eternal Life.[5]

The final parallel with the Messianic Feast described in Chapter 9is too striking to be overlooked.

The celestial nature of the deity is also well brought out in thecurious text edited by Dieterich from the great Magic Papyrus ofthe Bibliothèque Nationale, and referred to in a previous chapter.This text purports to be a formula of initiation, and we find theaspirant ascending through the Seven Heavenly Spheres, to be finallymet by Mithra who brings him to the presence of God. So in theMithraic temples we find seven ladders, the ascent of which by theInitiate typified his passage to the seventh and supreme Heaven.[6]

Bousset points out that the original idea was that of three Heavensabove which was Paradise; the conception of Seven Heavens, ruledby the seven Planets, which we find in Mithraism, is due to theinfluence of Babylonian sidereal cults.[7]

There is thus a marked difference between the two initiations;the Attis initiate dies, is possibly buried, and revives with his god;the Mithra initiate rises direct to the celestial sphere, where he ismet and welcomed by his god. There is here no evidence of the deathand resurrection of the deity.

What then is the point of contact between the cults that brought theminto such close and intimate relationship?

I think it must be sought in the higher teaching, which, under widelydiffering external mediums, included elements common to both. In bothcults the final aim was the attainment of spiritual and eternal life.Moreover, both possessed essential features which admitted, if theydid not encourage, an assimilation with Christianity. Both of them,if forced to yield ground to their powerful rival, could, with a fairshow of reason, claim that they had been not vanquished, butfulfilled, that their teaching had, in Christianity, attained itsnormal term.

The extracts given above will show the striking analogy between thehigher doctrine of Mithraism, and the fundamental teaching of its greatrival, a resemblance that was fully admitted, and which became thesubject of heated polemic. Greek philosophers did not hesitate toestablish a parallel entirely favourable to Mithraism, while Christianapologists insisted that such resemblances were the work of the Devil,a line of argument which, as we have seen above, they had alreadyadopted with regard to the older Mysteries. It is a matter ofhistorical fact that at one moment the religious fate of the West hungin the balance, and it was an open question whether Mithraism orChristianity would be the dominant Creed.[8]

On the other hand we have also seen that certainly one early Christiansect, the Naassenes, while equally regarding the Logos as the centreof their belief, held the equivalent deity to be Attis, and frequentedthe Phrygian Mysteries as the most direct source of spiritualenlightenment, while the teaching as to the Death and Resurrectionof the god, and the celebration of a Mystic Feast, in which theworshippers partook of the Food and Drink of Eternal Life, offeredparallels to Christian doctrine and practice to the full as strikingas any to be found in the Persian faith.

I would therefore submit that it was rather through the medium oftheir inner, Esoteric, teaching, that the two faiths, so different intheir external practice, preserved so close and intimate a connectionand that, by the medium of that same Esoteric teaching, both alikecame into contact with Christianity, and, in the case of the Phrygiancult, could, and actually did, claim identity with it.

Baudissin in his work above referred to suggests that the Adoniscult owed its popularity to its higher, rather than to its lower,elements, to its suggestion of ever-renewing life, rather than to thesatisfaction of physical desire to be found in it.[9] Later evidenceseems to prove that he judged correctly.

We may also note that the Attis Mysteries were utilized by the priestsof Mithra for the initiation of women who were originally excludedfrom the cult of the Persian god. Cumont remarks that this, anabsolute rule in the Western communities, seems to have had exceptionsin the Eastern.[10] Is it possible that the passage quoted in theprevious chapter, in which Perceval is informed that no woman mayspeak of the Grail, is due to contamination with the Mithra worship?It does not appear to be in harmony with the prominent position assignedto women in the Grail ritual, the introduction of a female Grailmessenger, or the fact that (with the exception of Merlin in theBorron text) it is invariably a maiden who directs the hero on hisroad to the Grail castle, or reproaches him for his failure there.

But there is little doubt that, separately, or in conjunction,both cults travelled to the furthest borders of the Roman Empire.The medium of transmission is very fully discussed by Cumont in bothof the works referred to. The channel appears to have been three-fold.First, commercial, through the medium of Syrian merchants. Asardently religious as practically business-like, the Syriansintroduced their native deities wherever they penetrated, "foundingtheir chapels at the same time as their counting-houses."[11]

Secondly, there was social penetration--by means of the Asiaticslaves, who formed a part of most Roman households, and the Stateemployés, such as officers of customs, army paymasters, etc., largelyrecruited from Oriental sources.

Thirdly, and most important, were the soldiers, the foreign legions,who, drawn mostly from the Eastern parts of the Empire, brought theirnative deities with them. Cumont signalizes as the most active agentsof the dispersion of the cult of Mithra, Soldiers, Slaves, andMerchants.[12]

As far North as Hadrian's Dyke there has been found an inscription inverse in honour of the goddess of Hierapolis, the author a prefect,probably, Cumont remarks, the officer of a cohort of Hamii, stationedin this distant spot. Dedications to Melkart and Astarte have beenfound at Corbridge near Newcastle. The Mithraic remains arepractically confined to garrison centres, London, York, Chester,Caerleon-on-Usk, and along Hadrian's Dyke.[13] From the highlyinteresting map attached to the Study, giving the sites of ascertainedMithraic remains, there seems to have been such a centre inPembrokeshire.

Now in view of all this evidence is it not at least possible thatthe higher form of the Attis cult, that in which it was known andpractised by early Gnostic Christians, may have been known in GreatBritain? Scholars have been struck by the curiously unorthodox toneof the Grail romances, their apparent insistence on a successionquite other than the accredited Apostolic tradition, and yet, accordingto the writers, directly received from Christ Himself. The lateM. Paulin Paris believed that the source of this peculiar feature wasto be found in the struggle for independence of the early BritishChurch; but, after all, the differences of that Church with Romeaffected only minor points of discipline: the date of Easter, thefashion of tonsure of the clergy, nothing which touched vitaldoctrines of the Faith. Certainly the British Church never claimedthe possession of a revelation à part. But if the theory based uponthe evidence of the Naassene document be accepted such a presentationcan be well accounted for. According to Hippolytus the doctrines ofthe sect were derived from James, the brother of Our Lord, and Clementof Alexandria asserts that "The Lord imparted the Gnosis to Jamesthe Just, to John and to Peter, after His Resurrection; these deliveredit to the rest of the Apostles, and they to the Seventy."[14]Thus the theory proposed in these pages will account not only for theundeniable parallels existing between the Vegetation cults and theGrail romances, but also for the Heterodox colouring of the latter,two elements which at first sight would appear to be whollyunconnected, and quite incapable of relation to a common source.

Nor in view of the persistent vitality and survival, even to our ownday, of the Exoteric practices can there be anything improbable inthe hypothesis of a late survival of the Esoteric side of the ritual.Cumont points out that the worship of Mithra was practised in thefifth century in certain remote cantons of the Alps and theVosges--i.e., at the date historically assigned to King Arthur.Thus it would not be in any way surprising if a tradition of thesurvival of these semi-Christian rites at this period also existed.[15]In my opinion it is the tradition of such a survival which lies atthe root, and explains the confused imagery, of the text we know as theElucidation. I have already, in my short study of the subject, setforth my views; as I have since found further reasons for maintainingthe correctness of the solution proposed, I will repeat it here.[16]

The text in question is found in three of our existing Grail versions:in the MS. of Mons; in the printed edition of 1530; and in the Germantranslation of Wisse-Colin. It is now prefixed to the poem ofChrétien de Troyes, but obviously, from the content, had originallynothing to do with that version.

It opens with the passage quoted above (p. 130) in which Master Blihisutters his solemn warning against revealing the secret of the Grail.It goes on to tell how aforetime there were maidens dwelling in thehills[17] who brought forth to the passing traveller food and drink.But King Amangons outraged one of these maidens, and took away fromher her golden Cup:

"Des puceles une esforcha Et la coupe d'or li toli--[4]."

His knights, when they saw their lord act thus, followed his evilexample, forced the fairest of the maidens, and robbed them of theircups of gold. As a result the springs dried up, the land becamewaste, and the court of the Rich Fisher, which had filled the landwith plenty, could no longer be found.

For 1000 years the land lies waste, till, in the days of King Arthur,his knights find maidens wandering in the woods, each with herattendant knight. They joust, and one, Blihos-Bliheris, vanquished byGawain, comes to court and tells how these maidens are the descendantsof those ravished by King Amangons and his men, and how, could thecourt of the Fisher King, and the Grail, once more be found, theland would again become fertile. Blihos-Bliheris is, we are told,so entrancing a story-teller that none at court could ever weary oflistening to his words.

The natural result, which here does not immediately concern us, wasthat Arthur's knights undertook the quest, and Gawain achieved it.Now at first sight this account appears to be nothing but a fantasticfairy-tale (as such Professor Brown obviously regarded it), andalthough the late Dr Sebastian Evans attempted in all seriousness tofind a historical basis for the story in the events which provoked thepronouncement of the Papal Interdict upon the realm of King John, andthe consequent deprivation of the Sacraments, I am not aware thatanyone took the solution seriously. Yet, on the basis of the theorynow set forth, is it not possible that there may be a real foundationof historical fact at the root of this wildly picturesque tale? Mayit not be simply a poetical version of the disappearance from the landof Britain of the open performance of an ancient Nature ritual?A ritual that lingered on in the hills and mountains of Wales as theMithra worship did in the Alps and Vosges, celebrated as that culthabitually was, in natural caverns, and mountain hollows? That itrecords the outrage offered by some, probably local, chieftain to apriestess of the cult, an evil example followed by his men, and thesubsequent cessation of the public celebration of the rites, acessation which in the folk-belief would certainly be held sufficientto account for any subsequent drought that might affect the land?But the ritual, in its higher, esoteric, form was still secretlyobserved, and the tradition, alike of its disappearance as a publiccult, and of its persistence in some carefully hidden strong-hold,was handed on in the families of those who had been, perhaps still were,officiants of these rites.

That among the handers on of the torch would be the descendants of theoutraged maidens, is most probable.

The sense of mystery, of a real danger to be faced, of an overwhelmingSpiritual gain to be won, were of the essential nature of the tale.It was the very mystery of Life which lay beneath the picturesquewrappings; small wonder that the Quest of the Grail became the synonymfor the highest achievement that could be set before men, and thatwhen the romantic evolution of the Arthurian tradition reached itsterm, this supreme adventure was swept within the magic circle. Theknowledge of the Grail was the utmost man could achieve, Arthur'sknights were the very flower of manhood, it was fitting that to themthe supreme test be offered. That the man who first told the story,and boldly, as befitted a born teller of tales, wedded it theArthurian legend, was himself connected by descent with the ancientFaith, himself actually held the Secret of the Grail, and told, inpurposely romantic form, that of which he knew, I am firmly convinced,nor do I think that the time is far distant when the missing linkswill be in our hand, and we shall be able to weld once more the goldenchain which connects Ancient Ritual with Medieval Romance.

CHAPTER XIII

The Perilous Chapel

Students of the Grail romances will remember that in many of theversions the hero--sometimes it is a heroine--meets with a strangeand terrifying adventure in a mysterious Chapel, an adventure which,we are given to understand, is fraught with extreme peril to life.The details vary: sometimes there is a Dead Body laid on the altar;sometimes a Black Hand extinguishes the tapers; there are strangeand threatening voices, and the general impression is that this isan adventure in which supernatural, and evil, forces are engaged.

Such an adventure befalls Gawain on his way to the Grail Castle.[1]He is overtaken by a terrible storm, and coming to a Chapel, standingat a crossways in the middle of a forest, enters for shelter. Thealtar is bare, with no cloth, or covering, nothing is thereon but agreat golden candlestick with a tall taper burning within it. Behindthe altar is a window, and as Gawain looks a Hand, black and hideous,comes through the window, and extinguishes the taper, while a voicemakes lamentation loud and dire, beneath which the very buildingrocks. Gawain's horse shies for terror, and the knight, making thesign of the Cross, rides out of the Chapel, to find the storm abated,and the great wind fallen. Thereafter the night was calm and clear.

In the Perceval section of Wauchier and Manessier we find the sameadventure in a dislocated form.[2]

Perceval, seeking the Grail Castle, rides all day through a heavystorm, which passes off at night-fall, leaving the weather calm andclear. He rides by moonlight through the forest, till he sees beforehim a great oak, on the branches of which are lighted candles, ten,fifteen, twenty, or twenty-five. The knight rides quickly towards it,but as he comes near the lights vanish, and he only sees before hima fair little Chapel, with a candle shining through the open door.He enters, and finds on the altar the body of a dead knight, coveredwith a rich samite, a candle burning at his feet.

Perceval remains some time, but nothing happens. At midnight hedeparts; scarcely has he left the Chapel when, to his great surprise,the light is extinguished.

The next day he reaches the castle of the Fisher King, who asks himwhere he passed the preceding night. Perceval tells him of theChapel; the King sighs deeply, but makes no comment.

Wauchier's section breaks off abruptly in the middle of this episode;when Manessier takes up the story he gives explanations of the Grail,etc., at great length, explanations which do not at all agree withthe indications of his predecessor. When Perceval asks of the Chapelhe is told it was built by Queen Brangemore of Cornwall, who waslater murdered by her son Espinogres, and buried beneath the altar.Many knights have since been slain there, none know by whom, save itbe by the Black Hand which appeared and put out the light. (As we sawabove it had not appeared.) The enchantment can only be put an end toif a valiant knight will fight the Black Hand, and, taking a veil keptin the Chapel, will dip it in holy water, and sprinkle the walls, afterwhich the enchantment will cease.

At a much later point Manessier tells how Perceval, riding through theforest, is overtaken by a terrible storm. He takes refuge in a Chapelwhich he recognizes as that of the Black Hand. The Hand appears,Perceval fights against and wounds it; then appears a Head; finallythe Devil in full form who seizes Perceval as he is about to seek theveil of which he has been told. Perceval makes the sign of the Cross,on which the Devil vanishes, and the knight falls insensible beforethe altar. On reviving he takes the veil, dips it in holy water, andsprinkles the walls within and without. He sleeps there that night,and the next morning, on waking, sees a belfry. He rings the bell,upon which an old man, followed by two others, appears. He tellsPerceval he is a priest, and has buried 3000 knights slain by theBlack Hand; every day a knight has been slain, and every day a marbletomb stands ready with the name of the victim upon it. QueenBrangemore founded the cemetery, and was the first to be buried withinit. (But according to the version given earlier she was buriedbeneath the altar.) We have here evidently a combination of twothemes, Perilous Chapel and Perilous Cemetery, originally independentof each other. In other MSS. the Wauchier adventure agrees much moreclosely with the Manessier sequel, the Hand appearing, andextinguishing the light. Sometimes the Hand holds a bridle, a featureprobably due to contamination with a Celtic Folk-tale, in which amysterious Hand (here that of a giant) steals on their birth-night aChild, and a foal.[3] These Perceval versions are manifestly confusedand dislocated, and are probably drawn from more than one source.

In the Queste Gawain and Hector de Maris come to an old and ruinedChapel where they pass the night. Each has a marvellous dream. Thenext morning, as they are telling each other their respective visions,they see, "a Hand, showing unto the elbow, and was covered with redsamite, and upon that hung a bridle, not rich, and held within thefist a great candle that burnt right clear, and so passed afore them,and entered into the Chapel, and then vanished away, and they wist notwhere."[4] This seems to be an unintelligent borrowing from thePerceval version.

We have, also, a group of visits to the Perilous Chapel, or PerilousCemetery, which appear to be closely connected with each other. Ineach case the object of the visit is to obtain a portion of the clothwhich covers the altar, or a dead body lying upon the altar. Theromances in question are the Perlesvaus, the prose Lancelot, and theChevalier à deux Espées.[5] The respective protagonists being Perceval'ssister, Sir Lancelot, and the young Queen of Garadigan, whose city hasbeen taken by King Ris and who dares the venture to win her freedom.

In the first case the peril appears to lie in the Cemetery, which issurrounded by the ghosts of knights slain in the forest, and buried inunconsecrated ground. The Lancelot version is similar, but here thetitle is definitely Perilous Chapel. In the last version there is nohint of a Cemetery.

In the Lancelot version there is a dead knight on the altar, whosesword Lancelot takes in addition to the piece of cloth. In the poema knight is brought in, and buried before the altar; the young queen,after cutting off a piece of the altar cloth, uncovers the body, andbuckles on the sword. There is no mention of a Hand in any of thethree versions, which appear to be late and emasculated forms of thetheme.

The earliest mention of a Perilous Cemetery, as distinct from aChapel, appears to be in the Chastel Orguellous section of thePerceval, a section probably derived from a very early stratum ofArthurian romantic tradition. Here Arthur and his knights, on theirway to the siege of Chastel Orguellous, come to the Vergier desSepoltures, where they eat with the Hermits, of whom there are ahundred and more.

The adventures of Gawain in the Atre Perilleus,[7] and of Gawain andHector in the Lancelot of the final cyclic prose version, are of themost banal description; the theme, originally vivid and picturesque,has become watered down into a meaningless adventure of the mostconventional type.

But originally a high importance seems to have been attached to it.If we turn back to the first version given, that of which Gawain is thehero, we shall find that special stress is laid on this adventure, asbeing part of 'the Secret of the Grail,' of which no man may speakwithout grave danger.[8] We are told that, but for Gawain's loyalty andcourtesy, he would not have survived the perils of that night. In thesame way Perceval, before reaching the Fisher King's castle, meets amaiden, of whom he asks the meaning of the lighted tree, Chapel, etc.She tells him it is all part of the saint secret of the Grail.[9] Nowwhat does this mean? Unless I am much mistaken the key is to be foundin a very curious story related in the Perlesvaus, which is twicereferred to in texts of a professedly historical character. The taleruns thus. King Arthur has fallen into slothful and fainéant ways, muchto the grief of Guenevere, who sees her lord's fame and prestige waningday by day. In this crisis she urges him to visit the Chapel of SaintAustin, a perilous adventure, but one that may well restore hisreputation. Arthur agrees; he will take with him only one squire; theplace is too dangerous. He calls a youth named Chaus, the son of Yvainthe Bastard, and bids him be ready to ride with him at dawn. The lad,fearful of over-sleeping, does not undress, but lies down as he is inthe hall. He falls asleep--and it seems to him that the King haswakened and gone without him. He rises in haste, mounts and rides afterArthur, following, as he thinks, the track of his steed. Thus he comesto a forest glade, where he sees a Chapel, set in the midst of agrave-yard. He enters, but the King is not there; there is no livingthing, only the body of a knight on a bier, with tapers burning ingolden candlesticks at head and foot. Chaus takes out one of thetapers, and thrusting the golden candlestick betwixt hose and thigh,remounts and rides back in search of the King. Before he has gone farhe meets a man, black, and foul-favoured, armed with a large two-edgedknife. He asks, has he met King Arthur? The man answers, No, but hehas met him, Chaus; he is a thief and a traitor; he has stolen thegolden candlestick; unless he gives it up he shall pay for it dearly.Chaus refuses, and the man smites him in the side with the knife. Witha loud cry the lad awakes, he is lying in the hall at Cardoil, woundedto death, the knife in his side and the golden candlestick still in hishose.

He lives long enough to tell the story, confess, and be shriven, andthen dies. Arthur, with the consent of his father, gives thecandlestick to the church of Saint Paul, then newly founded, "for hewould that this marvellous adventure should everywhere be known, andthat prayer should be made for the soul of the squire."[10]

The pious wish of the King seems to have been fulfilled, as the storywas certainly well known, and appears to have been accepted as agenuine tradition. Thus the author of the Histoire de Fulk Fitz-Waringives a résumé of the adventure, and asserts that the Chapel of SaintAustin referred to was situated in Fulk's patrimony, i.e., in thetract known as the Blaunche Launde, situated in Shropshire, on theborder of North Wales. As source for the tale he refers to Le Graal,le lyvre de le Seint Vassal, and goes on to state that here KingArthur recovered sa bounté et sa valur when he had lost his knighthoodand fame. This obviously refers to the Perlesvaus romance, thoughwhether in its present, or in an earlier form, it is impossible tosay. In any case the author of the Histoire evidently thought thatthe Chapel in question really existed, and was to be located inShropshire.[11] But John of Glastonbury also refers to the story,and he connects it with Glastonbury.[12]

Now how can we account for so wild, and at first sight so improbable,a tale assuming what we may term a semi-historical character, andbecoming connected with a definite and precise locality?--a featurewhich is, as a rule, absent from the Grail stories.

At the risk of startling my readers I must express my opinion that itwas because the incidents recorded were a reminiscence of somethingwhich had actually happened, and which, owing to the youth, andpossible social position, of the victim, had made a profoundimpression upon the popular imagination.

For this is the story of an initiation (or perhaps it would be morecorrect to say the test of fitness for an initiation) carried out onthe astral plane, and reacting with fatal results upon the physical.

We have already seen in the Naassene document that the Mystery ritualcomprised a double initiation, the Lower, into the mysteries ofgeneration, i.e., of physical Life; the higher, into the SpiritualDivine Life, where man is made one with God.[13]

Some years ago I offered the suggestion that the test for the primaryinitiation, that into the sources of physical life, would probablyconsist in a contact with the horrors of physical death, and that thetradition of the Perilous Chapel, which survives in the Grail romancesin confused and contaminated form, was a reminiscence of the test forthis lower initiation.[14] This would fully account for theimportance ascribed to it in the Bleheris-Gawain form, and for theasserted connection with the Grail. It was not till I came to studythe version of the Perlesvaus, with a view to determining its originalprovenance, that I recognized its extreme importance for criticalpurposes. The more one studies this wonderful legend the more onediscovers significance in what seem at first to be entirelyindependent and unrelated details. If the reader will refer to myNotes on the Perlesvaus, above referred to, he will find that theresult of an investigation into the evidence for locale pointed to theconclusion that the author of the Histoire de Fulk Fitz-Warin and mostprobably also the author of the Perlesvaus before him, were mistakenin their identification, that there was no tradition of any suchChapel in Shropshire, and consequently no tale of its foundation, suchas the author of the Histoire relates. But I was also able to showthat further north, in Northumberland, there was also a Blanchland,connected with the memory of King Arthur, numerous dedications toSaint Austin, and a tradition of that Saint driving out the localdemons closely analogous to the tale told of the presumed Shropshiresite. I therefore suggested that inasmuch as the Perlesvausrepresented Arthur as holding his court at Cardoil (Carlisle), theNorthern Blanchland, which possessed a Chapel of Saint Austin, and laywithin easy reach, was probably the original site rather than theShropshire Blaunche Launde, which had no Chapel, and was much furtheraway.

Now in view of the evidence set forth in the last chapter, isit not clear that this was a locality in which these semi-Pagan,semi-Christian, rites, might, prima facie, be expected to linger on?It is up here, along the Northern border, that the Roman legionarieswere stationed; it is here that we find monuments and memorials oftheir heathen cults; obviously this was a locality where thedemon-hunting activities of the Saint might find full scope foraction. I would submit that there is at least presumptive evidencethat we may here be dealing with the survival of a genuine tradition.

And should any of my readers find it difficult to believe that, evendid initiations take place, and even were they of a character thatinvolved a stern test of mental and physical endurance--and I imaginemost scholars would admit that there was, possibly, more in theoriginal institutions, than, let us say, in a modern admission toFree-Masonry--yet it is 'a far cry' from pre-Christian initiationsto Medieval Romance, and a connection between the two is a rashpostulate, I would draw their attention to the fact that, quite apartfrom our Grail texts, we possess a romance which is, plainly, andblatantly, nothing more or less than such a record. I refer, ofcourse, to Owain Miles, or The Purgatory of Saint Patrick, where wehave an account of the hero, after purification by fasting and prayer,descending into the Nether World, passing through the abodes of theLost, finally reaching Paradise, and returning to earth after ThreeDays, a reformed and regenerated character.[15]

"Then with his monks the Prior anon, With Crosses and with Gonfanon Went to that hole forthright, Thro' which Knight Owain went below, There, as of burning fire the glow, They saw a gleam of light; And right amidst that beam of light He came up, Owain, God's own knight, By this knew every man That he in Paradise had been, And Purgatory's pains had seen, And was a holy man."

Now if we turn to Bousset's article Himmelfahrt der Seele, to which Ihave previously referred (p. ---), we shall find abundant evidencethat such a journey to the Worlds beyond was held to be a highspiritual adventure of actual possibility--a venture to be undertakenby those who, greatly daring, felt that the attainment of actualknowledge of the Future Life was worth all the risks, and they weregreat and terrible, which such an enterprise involved.

Bousset comments fully on Saint Paul's claim to have been 'caughtup into the Third Heaven' and points out that such an experiencewas the property of the Rabbinical school to which Saul of Tarsushad belonged, and was brought over by him from his Jewish past; suchexperiences were rare in Orthodox Christianity.[16] According toJewish classical tradition but one Rabbi had successfully passed thetest, other aspirants either failing at a preliminary stage, or, ifthey persevered, losing their senses permanently. The practice ofthis ecstatic ascent ceased among Jews in the second century A.D.

Bousset also gives instances of the soul leaving the body for threedays, and wandering through other worlds, both good and evil, and alsodiscusses the origin of the bridge which must be crossed to reachParadise, both features characteristic of the Owain poem.[17] In factthe whole study is of immense importance for a critical analysis ofthe sources of the romance in question.

And here I would venture to beg the adherents of the 'Celtic' schoolto use a little more judgment in their attribution of sources. Visitsto the Otherworld are not always derivations from Celtic Fairy-lore.Unless I am mistaken the root of this theme is far more deeplyimbedded than in the shifting sands of Folk and Fairy tale. I believeit to be essentially a Mystery tradition; the Otherworld is not amyth, but a reality, and in all ages there have been souls who havebeen willing to brave the great adventure, and to risk all for thechance of bringing back with them some assurance of the future life.Naturally these ventures passed into tradition with the men who riskedthem. The early races of men became semi-mythic, their beliefs, theirexperiences, receded into a land of mist, where their figures assumedfantastic outlines, and the record of their deeds departed more andmore widely from historic accuracy.

The poets and dreamers wove their magic webs, and a world apart fromthe world of actual experience came to life. But it was not all myth,nor all fantasy; there was a basis of truth and reality at thefoundation of the mystic growth, and a true criticism will not restcontent with wandering in these enchanted lands, and holding all itmeets with for the outcome of human imagination.

The truth may lie very deep down, but it is there, and it is worthseeking, and Celtic fairy-tales, charming as they are, can neverafford a satisfactory, or abiding, resting place. I, for one, utterlyrefuse to accept such as an adequate goal for a life's research.A path that leads but into a Celtic Twilight can only be a by-path,and not the King's Highway!

The Grail romances repose eventually, not upon a poet's imagination,but upon the ruins of an august and ancient ritual, a ritual whichonce claimed to be the accredited guardian of the deepest secrets ofLife. Driven from its high estate by the relentless force ofreligious evolution--for after all Adonis, Attis, and their congeners,were but the 'half-gods' who must needs yield place when 'the Gods'themselves arrive--it yet lingered on; openly, in Folk practice, inFast and Feast, whereby the well-being of the land might be assured;secretly, in cave or mountain-fastness, or island isolation, wherethose who craved for a more sensible (not necessarily sensuous)contact with the unseen Spiritual forces of Life than the orthodoxdevelopment of Christianity afforded, might, and did, findsatisfaction.

Were the Templars such? Had they, when in the East, come into touchwith a survival of the Naassene, or some kindred sect? It seemsexceedingly probable. If it were so we could understand at once thepuzzling connection of the Order with the Knights of the Grail, andthe doom which fell upon them. That they were held to be Heretics isvery generally admitted, but in what their Heresy consisted no onereally knows; little credence can be attached to the stories of idolworship often repeated. If their Heresy, however, were such asindicated above, a Creed which struck at the very root and vitals ofChristianity, we can understand at once the reason for punishment, andthe necessity for secrecy. In the same way we can now understand whythe Church knows nothing of the Grail; why that Vessel, surroundedas it is with an atmosphere of reverence and awe, equated with thecentral Sacrament of the Christian Faith, yet appears in no Legendary,is figured in no picture, comes on the scene in no Passion Play.The Church of the eleventh and twelfth centuries knew well what theGrail was, and we, when we realize its genesis and true lineage, needno longer wonder why a theme, for some short space so famous and sofruitful a source of literary inspiration, vanished utterly andcompletely from the world of literature.

Were Grail romances forbidden? Or were they merely discouraged?Probably we shall never know, but of this one thing we may be sure,the Grail is a living force, it will never die; it may indeed sink outof sight, and, for centuries even, disappear from the field ofliterature, but it will rise to the surface again, and become oncemore a theme of vital inspiration even as, after slumbering from thedays of Malory, it woke to new life in the nineteenth century, makingits fresh appeal through the genius of Tennyson and Wagner.

CHAPTER XIV

The Author

Having now completed our survey of the various elements which haveentered into the composite fabric of the Grail Legend, the questionnaturally arises where, and when, did that legend assume romanticform, and to whom should we ascribe its literary origin?

On these crucial points the evidence at our disposal is far fromcomplete, and we can do little more than offer suggestions towardsthe solution of the problem.

With regard to the first point, that of locality, the evidence isunmistakably in favour of a Celtic, specifically a Welsh, source.As a literary theme the Grail is closely connected with the Arthuriantradition. The protagonist is one of Arthur's knights, and the heroof the earlier version, Gawain, is more closely connected with Arthurthan are his successors, Perceval and Galahad. The Celtic origin ofboth Gawain and Perceval is beyond doubt; and the latter is not merelya Celt, but is definitely Welsh; he is always 'li Gallois.' GalahadI hold to be a literary, and not a traditional, hero; he is the productof deliberate literary invention, and has no existence outside theframe of the later cyclic redactions. It is not possible at thepresent moment to say whether the Queste was composed in the BritishIsles, or on the continent, but we may safely lay it down as a basicprinciple that the original Grail heroes are of insular origin, andthat the Grail legend, in its romantic, and literary, form is closelyconnected with British pseudo-historical tradition.

The beliefs and practices of which, if the theory maintained in thesepages be correct, the Grail stories offer a more or less coherentsurvival can be shown, on the evidence of historic monuments, andsurviving Folk-customs, to have been popular throughout the area ofthe British Isles; while, with regard to the higher teaching of whichI hold these practices to have been the vehicle, Pliny comments uponthe similarity existing between the ancient Magian Gnosis and theDruidical Gnosis of Gaul and Britain, an indication which, in thedearth of accurate information concerning the teaching of the Druids,is of considerable value.[1]

As we noted in the previous chapter, an interesting parallel existsbetween Wales, and localities, such as the Alps, and the Vosges,where we have definite proof that these Mystery cults lingered onafter they had disappeared from public celebration. The Chartappended to Cumont's Monuments de Mithra shows Mithraic remains inprecisely the locality where we have reason to believe certain of theGawain and Perceval stories to have originated.

As to the date of origin, that, of course, is closely connected withthe problem of authorship; if we can, with any possibility, identifythe author we can approximately fix the date. So far as the literaryevidence is concerned, we have no trace of the story before thetwelfth century, but when we do meet with it, it is already incomplete, and crystallized, form. More, there is already evidence ofcompeting versions; we have no existing Grail romance which we canclaim to be free from contamination, and representing in all respectsthe original form.

There is no need here to go over old, and well-trodden, ground; inmy studies of the Perceval Legend, and in the later popular résuméof the evidence,[2] The Quest of the Holy Grail, I have analysed thetexts, and shown that, while the poem of Chrétien de Troyes is ourearliest surviving literary version, there is the strongest possibleevidence that Chrétien, as he himself admits, was not inventing, butre-telling, an already popular tale.[3] The Grail Quest was a themewhich had been treated not once nor twice, but of which numerous,and conflicting, versions were already current, and, when Wauchierde Denain undertook to complete Chrétien's unfinished work, he drewlargely upon these already existing forms, regardless of the factthat they not only contradicted the version they were ostensiblycompleting, but were impossible to harmonize with each other.

It is of importance for our investigation, however, to note thatwhere Wauchier does refer to a definite source, it is to an evidentlyimportant and already famous collection of tales, Le Grant Conte,comprising several 'Branches,' the hero of the collection being notChrétien's hero, Perceval, but Gawain, who, both in pseudo-historicand romantic tradition, is far more closely connected with theArthurian legend, occupying, as he does, the traditional position ofnephew, Sister's Son, to the monarch who is the centre of the cycle;even as Cuchullinn is sister's son to Conchobar, Diarmid to Finn,Tristan to Mark, and Roland to Charlemagne. In fact this relationshipwas so obviously required by tradition that we find Perceval figuringnow as sister's son to Arthur, now to the Grail King, according as theArthurian, or the Grail, tradition dominates the story.[4]

The actual existence of such a group of tales as those referred to byWauchier derives confirmation from our surviving Gawain poems, as wellas from the references in the Elucidation, and on the evidence at ourdisposal I have ventured to suggest the hypothesis of a group ofpoems, dealing with the adventures of Gawain, his son, and brother,the ensemble being originally known as The Geste of Syr Gawayne, atitle which, in the inappropriate form The Jest of Sir Gawain, ispreserved in the English version of that hero's adventure with thesister of Brandelis.[5] So keen a critic as Dr Brugger has nothesitated to accept the theory of the existence of this Geste, and isof opinion that the German poem Diû Crône may, in part at least, bederived from this source.

The central adventure ascribed to Gawain in this group of tales isprecisely the visit to the Grail Castle to which we have alreadyreferred, and we have pointed out that the manner in which it isrelated, its directness, simplicity, and conformity with what we knowof the Mystery teaching presumably involved, taken in connection withthe personality of the hero, and his position in Arthurian romantictradition, appear to warrant us in assigning to it the position ofpriority among the conflicting versions we possess.

At two points in the re-telling of these Gawain tales Wauchierdefinitely refers to the author by name, Bleheris. On the secondoccasion he states categorically that this Bleheris was of Welsh birthand origin, né et engenuïs en Galles, and that he told the tale inconnection with which the statement is made to a certain Comte dePoitiers, whose favourite story it was, he loved it above all others,which would imply that it was not the only tale Bleheris had toldhim.[6]

As we have seen in a previous chapter, the Elucidation prefaces itsaccount of the Grail Quest by a solemn statement of the gravity of thesubject to be treated, and a warning of the penalties which wouldfollow on a careless revelation of the secret. These warnings are putinto the mouth of a certain Master Blihis, concerning whom we hear nomore. A little further on in the poem we meet with a knight,Blihos-Bliheris, who, made prisoner by Gawain, reveals to Arthur andhis court the identity of the maidens wandering in the woods, of theFisher King, and the Grail, and is so good a story-teller that nonecan weary of listening to his tales.[7]

Again, in the fragmentary remains of Thomas's Tristan we have apassage in which the poet refers, as source, to a certain Bréri, whoknew "all the feats, and all the tales, of all the kings, and all thecounts who had lived in Britain."[8]

Finally, Giraldus Cambrensis refers to famosus ille fabulator,Bledhericus, who had lived "shortly before our time" and whose renownhe evidently takes for granted was familiar to his readers.

Now are we to hold that the Bleheris who, according to Wauchier,had told tales concerning Gawain, and Arthur's court, one of whictales was certainly the Grail adventure; the Master Blihis, who knewthe Grail mystery, and gave solemn warning against its revelation;the Blihos-Bliheris, who knew the Grail, and many other tales;the Bréri, who knew all the legendary tales concerning the princesof Britain; and the famous story-teller Bledhericus, of whom Giraldusspeaks, are distinct and separate personages, or mere inventions ofthe separate writers, or do all these passages refer to one and thesame individual, who, in that case, may well have deserved the titlefamosus ille fabulator?

With regard to the attitude taken up by certain critics, that noevidential value can be attached to these references, I would pointout that when Medieval writers quote an authority for their statementsthey, as a rule, refer to a writer whose name carries weight, andwill impress their readers; they are offering a guarantee for theauthenticity of their statements. The special attribution may bepurely fictitious but the individual referred to enjoys an establishedreputation. Thus, the later cyclic redactions of the Arthurian romancesare largely attributed to Walter Map, who, in view of his publicposition, and political activities, could certainly never have hadthe leisure to compose one half of the literature with which he iscredited! In the same way Robert de Borron, Chrétien de Troyes,Wolfram von Eschenbach, are all referred to as sources withoutany justification in fact. Nor is it probable that Wauchier, whowrote on the continent, and who, if he be really Wauchier de Denain,was under the patronage of the Count of Flanders, would have gone outof his way to invent a Welsh source.

Judging from analogy, the actual existence of a personage namedBleheris, who enjoyed a remarkable reputation as a story-teller, is,prima facie, extremely probable.[9]

But are these references independent, was there more than oneBleheris? I think not. The name is a proper, and not a family,name. In the latter case it might be possible to argue that we weredealing with separate members of a family, or group, of bardic poets,whose office it was to preserve, and relate, the national legends.But we are dealing with variants of a proper name, and that ofdistinctly insular, and Welsh origin.[10]

The original form, Bledri, was by no means uncommon in Wales: fromthat point of view there might well have been four or five, or evenmore, of that name, but that each and all of these should havepossessed the same qualifications, should have been equally wellversed in popular traditions, equally dowered with the gift ofstory-telling, on equally friendly terms with the Norman invaders,and equally possessed of such a knowledge of the French languageas should permit them to tell their stories in that tongue, is,I submit, highly improbable. This latter point, i.e., the knowledgeof French, seems to me to be of crucial importance. Given therelations between conqueror and conquered, and the intransigeantcharacter of Welsh patriotism, the men who were on sufficientlyfriendly terms with the invaders to be willing to relate the nationallegends, with an assurance of finding a sympathetic hearing, musthave been few and far between. I do not think the importance ofthis point has been sufficiently grasped by critics.

The problem then is to find a Welshman who, living at the end ofthe eleventh and commencement of the twelfth centuries, was wellversed in the legendary lore of Britain; was of sufficiently goodsocial status to be well received at court; possessed a good knowledgeof the French tongue; and can be shown to have been on friendlyterms with the Norman nobles.

Mr Edward Owen, of the Cymmrodorion Society, has suggested that acertain Welsh noble, Bledri ap Cadivor, fulfils, in a large measure,the conditions required. Some years ago I published in the RevueCeltique a letter in which Mr Owen summarized the evidence at hisdisposal. As the review in question may not be easily accessible tosome of my readers I will recapitulate the principal points.[11]

The father of Bledri, Cadivor, was a great personage in West Wales,and is looked upon as the ancestor of the most important families inthe ancient Dyfed, a division now represented by Pembrokeshire, andthe Western portion of Carmarthen. (We may note here that thetraditional tomb of Gawain is at Ross in Pembrokeshire, and that thereis reason to believe that the Perceval story, in its earliest form,was connected with that locality.)

Cadivor had three sons, of whom Bledri was the eldest; thus, at hisfather's death, he would be head of this ancient and distinguishedfamily. At the division of the paternal estates Bledri inherited,as his share, lands ranging along the right bank of the lower Towey,and the coast of South Pembrokeshire, extending as far as Manorbeer,the birthplace of Giraldus Cambrensis. (This is again a geographicalindication which should be borne in mind.) Cadivor himself appearsto have been on friendly terms with the Normans; he is said to haveentertained William the Conqueror on his visit to St David's in 1080,while every reference we have to Bledri shows him in close connectionwith the invaders.

Thus, in 1113 the Brut-y-Tywysogion mentions his name as ally of theNorman knights in their struggle to maintain their ground in, andaround, Carmarthen. In 1125 we find his name as donor of lands tothe Augustinian Church of St John the Evangelist, and St Theuloc ofCarmarthen, newly founded by Henry I. Here his name appears withthe significant title Latinarius (The Interpreter), a qualificationrepeated in subsequent charters of the same collection. In one ofthese we find Griffith, the son of Bledri, confirming his father'sgift. Professor Lloyd, in an article in Archaeologia Cambrensis,July 1907, has examined these charters, and considers the grant tohave been made between 1129 and 1134, the charter itself being ofthe reign of Henry I, 1101-1135.[12]

In the Pipe Roll of Henry I, 1131, Bledri's name is entered as debtorfor a fine incurred by the killing of a Fleming by his men; while ahighly significant entry records the fine of 7 marks imposed upon acertain Bleddyn of Mabedrud and his brothers for outraging Bledri'sdaughter. When we take into consideration the rank of Bledri, thisinsult to his family by a fellow Welshman would seem to indicate thathis relations with his compatriots were not of a specially friendlycharacter.

Mr Owen also points out that portion of the Brut-y-Tywysogion whichcovers the years 1101-20 (especially the events of the year 1113,where we find Bledri, and other friendly Welsh nobles, holding thecastle of Carmarthen for the Normans against the Welsh), is relatedat an altogether disproportionate length, and displays a strong biasin favour of the invaders. The year just referred to, for instance,occupies more than twice the space assigned to any other year.Mr Owen suggests that here Bledri himself may well have been thechronicler; a hypothesis which, if he really be the author we areseeking, is quite admissible.

So far as indications of date are concerned, Bledri probably livedbetween the years 1070-1150. His father Cadivor died in 1089, and hislands were divided between his sons of whom Bledri, as we have seen,was the eldest. Thus they cannot have been children at that date;Bledri, at least, would have been born before 1080. From the evidenceof the Pipe Roll we know that he was living in 1131. The chartersigned by his son, confirmatory of his grant, must have beensubsequent to 1148, as it was executed during the Episcopate of David,Bishop of St David's 1148-1176. Thus the period of 80 years suggestedabove (1070-1150) may be taken as covering the extreme limit to beassigned to his life, and activity.

The passage in which Giraldus Cambrensis refers to Bledhericus,famosus ille fabulator who tempora nostra paulo praevenit, was writtenabout 1194; thus it might well refer to a man who had died some 40 or50 years previously. As we have noted above, Giraldus was born uponground forming a part of Bledri's ancestral heritage, and thus mightwell be familiar with his fame.

The evidence is of course incomplete, but it does provide us witha personality fulfilling the main conditions of a complex problem.Thus, we have a man of the required name, and nationality; living atan appropriate date; of the requisite social position; on excellentterms with the French nobles, and so well acquainted with theirlanguage as to sign himself officially 'The Interpreter.' We have nodirect evidence of his literary skill, or knowledge of the traditionalhistory of his country, but a man of his birth could scarcely havefailed to possess the latter, while certain peculiarities in thatsection of the national Chronicle which deals with the aid given byhim to the Norman invaders would seem to indicate that Bledri himself